Alan Krueger, head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that the country has added jobs for 27 months in a row, including 4.3 million jobs in the private sector. The economy still has a few bright spots. Americans bought cars and trucks a strong pace last month, giving automakers their best May since 2008.

Underscoring the challenge for Obama with five months to go in the campaign, a May poll by The Associated Press and GfK, a research company, showed that 52 percent disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy while 46 percent approved.

Some financial analysts said that the dismal job figures put pressure on the Federal Reserve to take additional steps to help the economy, but it was not clear how much good the Fed could do beyond trying to inspire confidence.

The central bank has already kept the short-term interest rate it controls at a record low of almost zero since the fall of 2008, during the financial crisis, and pledged to keep it there through late 2014.

It has undertaken two rounds of massive purchases of government bonds, starting in March 2009 and November 2010, to help drive long-term interest rates down and stimulate stock prices. Another program to lower long-term interest rates, known as Operation Twist, was announced last September and ends in June.

But low interest rates, other analysts pointed out, are not the problem. An investor stampede into bonds on Friday drove the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note as low as 1.44 percent, the lowest on record.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies next week before a joint committee of Congress, and the Fed next meets June 19 and 20.

The above chart shows the labor force participation rate. This statistic represents the share of working-age Americans who are either employed or unemployed but looking for work. It is not a pretty picture. Only 63.7% of working-age Americans are currently in the workforce  the lowest in almost 29 years!

To put it another way, 36.3% of working-age Americans do not have a job and are not even looking.

WASHINGTON (AP)  Another bad month for the U.S. job market is lengthening the list of perils facing the global economy.

American employers added only 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year and not even close to what economists expected. For the first time since June, the unemployment rate rose, to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent.

It was the third month in a row of weak job growth and further evidence that, just as in 2010 and 2011, a winter of hope for the economy has turned to a spring of disappointment.

“This is horrible,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, a consulting firm.

The job figures, released Friday by the Labor Department, dealt a blow to President Barack Obama at the start of a general election campaign that will turn on the economy.

They also deepened the pessimism of investors, who even before the report was released were worried about a debt crisis in Europe with no sign of solution and signs of a slowdown in the powerhouse economy of China.

“The U.S. is not an island, and what happens abroad matters here,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial. “The weakness in Europe, in particular, has a global reach and is affecting us.”

Today’s weak jobs report further confirms what nearly 13 million unemployed Americans already knew, that the Obama economy isn’t working. It isn’t working for the one in two recent college graduates who can’t get a good job. It isnt working for middle class families whose median income has dropped by $4,350. And it isn’t working for the 28,000 construction workers who lost their jobs in the month of May. Yet President Obama continues to block job-creating projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would create 20,000 jobs, many in the construction industry.

The president’s policies of wasteful government spending, massive tax increases, and more job-killing regulations have failed to get Americans back to work. After a record 40 straight months of unemployment above eight percent, it is clear that President Obama’s policies have made the economy worse.

23
posted on 06/03/2012 12:05:10 PM PDT
by Son House
(The Economic Boom Heard Around The World => TEA Party 2012)

thanks for the post. Can someone please explain how, with these figures, can anyone claim that they’ve ADDED jobs? Hasn’t there clearly been a huge net job loss, including people who’ve dropped out of the labor market?

Similarly, every week they announce 370,000+/- new unemployment claims. At the same time, they say the economy added 69,000 jobs. How can this be? Doesn’t this indicate a net loss of 300,000 jobs? What am I missing?

Proving that either the polling is rigged, or that 46% of the people are breathtakingly stupid, or that they are so far in the tank for hussein's ideology they're willing to destroy everything and suffer misery and deprivation to advance it.

IMHO anyone who "approves" of hussein's handling of the economy is so ignorant or so easily manipulated they ought not be allowed to vote or in any way shape the future of our Country. Seriously, they are dangerously out of touch.

Those aren’t really numbers you can add up. There were 383,000 (IIRC, and probably revised upward next week) people who filed for unemployment for the first time last week. While that does tend to indicate that THOSE 383K jobs went away, it doesn’t say anything about, for example, how many people already on unemployment got (newly created) jobs. If there were 383K of them, then our net job change would be zero, even though there were 383,000 new unemployment claims (IOW, the number of unemployed didn’t change, just the people), right?

Well, no. We also do not know how many new jobs were created and taken by immigrants, people entering the work force for the first time, and people returning to the work force. And we don’t know how many people left the work force without filing for unemployment.

IMO, new unemployment claims are more of a measure of volatility. High numbers mean there were a lot of changes. Probably negative changes for most of the people involved, but not necessarily bad for the economy, since it only measures one piece of the job pie.

The dismal 69,000 new jobs is what is terrifying. While “new jobs” sounds good, that’s not anywhere near the around 400,000 (IIRC) we need to keep up with our growing population. IOW, the number of people without jobs went up by about 331,000 in May. Ouch.

The global(ist) economy is a very bad idea whose time has come and gone. Hooking all the train cars (nations) to the US engine or the Chinese engine is a very bad idea. The engines are bound to derail and crash all the cars - over and over again.

Trade relations should be up to each nation based on their own people’s standards of living, needs and interests, and not regulated by the UN.

Some financial analysts said that the dismal job figures put pressure on the Federal Reserve to take additional steps to help the economy, but it was not clear how much good the Fed could do beyond trying to inspire confidence.

Supposedly 10k a day are turning 65. That is 10k more voters a day in favor of government spending.

No it isn't. Stop blaming seniors for this.

Many of us, no matter how old, how poor or how "fixed" in income, can see the wreckage clearly because we were raised and educated in an earlier time that you don't give us credit for. We are not stupid or blind.

Stop lumping seniors with the entitlement crowd. We paid for our little bits. They didn't. And we recognize a sinking ship when we see one.

34
posted on 06/03/2012 4:47:55 PM PDT
by CatDancer
(Too depressed to have a tag)

Many of us, no matter how old, how poor or how "fixed" in income, can see the wreckage clearly because we were raised and educated in an earlier time that you don't give us credit for. We are not stupid or blind. Stop lumping seniors with the entitlement crowd. We paid for our little bits. They didn't. And we recognize a sinking ship when we see one. After two years on SS you eat up your little bits of contribution and though they still call it SS, it is welfare once you've spent through your contribution.

My little bits of contribution add up to way over what I will draw if you figure it inflation and the money I would have made if it had simply drawn interest for the over 30 years I have been FORCED to pay into the ponzi scheme.

If Congress had not stolen the money and spent it on YOU and YOUR INTERESTS and simply let it draw that interest, it would not have been a Ponzi scheme.

The road goes both ways, don’t be so quick to quote the party line. Cause the guys that wrote it, are the same ones that stole the money.

36
posted on 06/03/2012 6:20:17 PM PDT
by American in Israel
(A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)

Obama could have kicked our ever-lovin asses if he had courted the older folks. Instead he’s come after them with a vengeance. They’re all afraid (rightly) that he’s going to try to pull their tubes. They are the biggest voting bloc, and they have nothing to do but go pull that lever and visit with the old folks running the polling places. Unless he can scare them away with thugs.

It's just like the scene in It's A Wonderful Life during the run on the Bailey Savings & Loan where "Tom" demands all his money. "I got two hundred and forty-two dollars in here and two hundred and forty-two dollars isn't going to break anybody."

So just cut us a check for our "little bits of contribution". I imagine you & I would both be happy with that check. :-)

42
posted on 06/03/2012 7:48:57 PM PDT
by kiryandil
(turning Americans into felons, one obnoxious drunk at a time (Zero Tolerance!!!))

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